Alt.History 101 (Alt.Chronicles)

by Ken Liu

  Our previous topic of conversation forgotten, someone in our group suggests a pick-up game of football. A rematch was promised, he reminds, and now it’s come due. I’m all for a little bit of physical distraction when I hear my name called out from behind.

  “Hey, Anatoly!”

  Corporal Calvin Strough. He’s smiling up and down as he trudges over to greet me. I chance a small smile back, pleased to see him, too. Calvin is one of the good ones. He’s the type that shouldn’t be a soldier, I think sometimes. Or maybe he’s the type the other soldiers should aspire to be. It’s hard to say anymore, the way the lines have become so blurred.

  “Corporal Strough,” I say with a small nod. “How are you today?”

  “Better since I ran across you.” Looking from me to my fellows, he chances a friendly grin. “You guys mind if I borrow your friend for a few minutes?”

  The question is met with an appropriate degree of cynicism, under the circumstances. “What do you want with him?” my friend Kasper wonders.

  Corporal Strough lifts his hands placatingly. “Easy, guys. I just wanted him to read a letter I wrote to my girl back home. You know, make sure I struck the right tone. Don’t you know Anatoly here is a regular man of letters?” He even reaches into his breast pocket, showing them the folded slip of paper.

  Kasper laughs, waving Strough off. “Yeah, whatever. Man of letters he may be, but he’s not much of a ladies’ man. Whatever advice he gives you, you’re better off doing the opposite, Corporal.”

  “I’ll come find you when we’re done,” I say.

  “You’d better. You’re my first choice for midfielder!” Kasper and the others hustle off to choose sides and get the game underway, leaving me at the mercy of Corporal Strough.

  He takes me to a tent that is temporarily unoccupied. When we’re finally alone, I ask, “What is this?”

  “It’s exactly what I said it is,” Strough says. He hands me the letter he showed Kasper. “Just read it.”

  So I do. Reluctantly, I do.

  Dearest Annie,

  I hope this letter finds you well. You must know that it pains me deeply to have you so close, yet so far out of reach. I think of you nightly, of what we might be together. I see your warm, kind eyes in my dreams and I imagine what it must feel like to kiss you. It is a question that has haunted me since the first day I laid eyes upon you. But if the question is one of longing, my heart knows the answer. I wish I could write you more, dear Annie, but know that I’m thinking of you always, and counting the days until we can be together at last.

  Yours always,

  Calvin

  The words are touching, the kind that would reassure any young girl yearning for a sweetheart swept into the crucible of some strange conflict. He’s put a lot of thought into them, a lot of his heart. “She’s a very lucky girl,” I say as I refold the letter, handing it back.

  Taking the letter, Strough smiles. “That’s a relief. Sometimes it can be hard to find the right words for someone so special, you know?”

  “I know exactly how you feel.”

  There’s a hard thud outside the tent, followed by a cheer that can only mean the football game is well under way.

  “Hey, I’ve kept you long enough,” Strough says. He gives me a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Thanks again for this. It means a lot to me.”

  “Any time, Corporal.”

  Strough leaves on that note and I join my fellows on our dusty excuse for a pitch. The match is fierce and well fought, but his words linger with me until well after I provide the game-winning assist.

  Even as I drift to sleep later that night, the words still haunt me.

  Dearest Annie…

  How much longer, I wonder before sleep finally claims me.

  How much longer can we continue our little charade? How much longer until everyone knows ‘she’ is really me?

  I first met Calvin three months earlier, as I was finishing reading to a group of the camp’s children. We don’t have many books, but thankfully some of our people chose to raid their home libraries instead of their jewelry boxes and wall safes when the Americans told them to bring only what they could carry. What few books we have are among the most priceless items in the camp, and the younger children gather every day in various tents for story time.

  “That’s all for today,” I said as I came to the end of my hour for the day. “Come back tomorrow and I’ll read some more to all of you, alright?”

  The children hustled off to play, already choosing sides for whatever made-up game would occupy the rest of their afternoon. One little girl lagged behind the others. Thinking she had been excluded from the game or that something else might be wrong, I asked her if she was alright. Shyly, she gestured for me to bend down, as if to share a secret. When I did, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for reading to us, Cousin Ani!” she exclaimed. At the time I thought her smile was the brightest thing I had seen since arriving in camp.

  “You’re welcome, Tatiana. Now, run along and play with your friends. You all need your exercise to stay nice and strong while we’re at camp.”

  Tatiana was gone in a flash, a storm of giggles and clomping footsteps. I laughed to myself as I packed away the books in an old trunk one of the babushkas had posthumously donated. Truly, the children are the strongest of all of us, I thought then.

  “Is that little girl really your cousin?”

  The voice belonged to a man whose face I didn’t recognize. One of the newest batch of soldiers sent to help secure the camp, I reasoned. He was on his first patrol, familiarizing himself with the camp’s layout when the sudden exodus of children drew his attention.

  “No,” I said, not bothering to hide my disdain for his presence. He had not bothered to knock or otherwise announce himself before entering the tent. I turned my back on him, showing him all the respect he had shown me. Still, I dared not ignore a direct question from a guard, even a greenhorn. I focused on packing up the books. “She was very scared when she arrived. She had no one, so we told her we would be her new family until she found hers. Now we are all her cousins or aunties and uncles.”

  Behind me, the man sighed. “That’s what I figured. I had just hoped that maybe… I don’t know.”

  “Why do you care, anyway?” The words came out before I could stop them. It was a foolish thing to have said. I braced myself for a scathing reprimand—or worse.

  Instead, he surprised me, saying softly, “I hate the way the families are separated before being sent off. It’s not right.”

  “It’s so you can control us better,” I reminded him, though by now the bitter edge to my voice had dulled.

  “I know,” he said. “That still doesn’t make it right.”

  He confused me, this new man. I should have been angry with him, this stranger helping to hold us prisoner even as he decried the methods that made his job easier. I should have been angry with him, yes, but something in his would not allow it. He was not spouting off or speaking empty words like so many of his fellows. No, these words had weight. They were as meaningful for him to say as they were for me to hear. It did not end there, either. There was an openness to this man with the new face, a willingness to listen, even sympathize, that made me want to reward his curiosity.

  Taking my silence for anger or befuddlement, he apologized for intruding and turned to leave. He was at the edge of the tent before I recovered myself.

  “My name is Anatoly,” I said. The soldier stopped. We stood with our backs turned, as anonymous to each other as a priest and confessor. “She calls me Ani because I told her that’s what my mother used to call me. I told her I missed the sound of it, and that if it made her feel better she could call me it, too.”

  Somehow taking us back to the beginning of the conversation seemed to let the air out of the balloon. We turned to face each other and the soldier nodded. He was young, my age or thereabouts. When he smiled, his cheeks dimpled.

  The soldier and
I approached each other, drawn together by our uncommon interest. “Nice to meet you, Anatoly,” he said. “I’m Corporal Calvin Strough.” He offered me his hand and we shook. Not as enemies or strangers, but as men.

  That was the moment, I think, that we fell in love.

  I had never given much thought to my inclinations when I was growing up. There were rules in place, expectations to live up to. Where I came from, a man found a girl, married her, and had many children (preferably in that order, though not always). He provided for his family and ensured the continuation of the bloodline. To deviate from those social protocols in any way was considered precisely that, selfish and deviant. I guarded my secret closely, having no desire to bring shame onto myself or my family. A wife wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, and of course I wanted children some day. I would do my part, I decided, play my role. I was resigned to my fate, though not especially saddened by it. Whether or not my heart knew it, the issue was settled in my head.

  Then my family came to the United States. Even before the bombs, I knew things were different here. Change was in the air. Who knows what might have happened for me if the world hadn’t fallen apart that fateful night in November?

  But that was not the world I lived in anymore. The world I lived in was an internment camp where holding onto hope was a fool’s burden at best.

  Even more frightening was that from that moment on, Calvin Strough was a part of that world, too.

  Dearest Annie…

  Time passes almost imperceptibly in a camp like ours. In the absence of minutes and hours, the passage of it is measured in milestones. The birth and growth of children. The death of the babushkas and Romani wanderers. The influx of new arrivals, scared and desperate and alone.

  Since meeting Corporal Strough, I’ve come to measure my time in camp by the occasions we cross paths. We work well together when given the opportunity. The people I share my tent with and those around us seem to respect me, and I’m happy to speak on their behalf. Calvin, in turn, does his best to make sure our concerns make it to the right ears. While not ideal, the arrangement keeps us close and eases the passage of time. For both of us.

  Then the worst possible word comes down.

  The camp is being expanded. We had all heard the rumors over the past few weeks, that soon the camps would come down and we would be released. Whether there was ever any truth to those rumors or they were simply lies we concocted and told ourselves, the stark reality is undeniable.

  We are not leaving this place for a very, very long time.

  “You heard it first here, folks,” Sergeant Dennehy announces. “We need ten new tents. That means we need fifty of you. And do yourselves a favor: Volunteer before we choose you.”

  There’s a bit of a murmur among the crowd. Then the hands go up, slowly, one after another. The man next to me starts to raise his hand. He has to be at least forty, fifty years older than me. I catch his hand and raise mine in its place. “I will volunteer for you.”

  He smiles and nods. “Thank you, son.”

  “Will you find someone to read to the children for me while I work?” I wonder. “They’re expecting a story this afternoon.”

  “Of course.” Leaning up on his tip-toes, the man kisses both of my cheeks. “You’re one of the good ones, you know that, Ani?”

  “Just make sure you find someone,” I say as I’m acknowledged.

  Because of our recent history, Dennehy assigns me to the exploration detail with Corporal Strough. It’s a pleasant, if somewhat unexpected surprise. We’re working as a two-man team, not far from where the first new tents are already going up. There are other teams nearby, but for the moment, we can speak relatively freely.

  “I dreamt about you against last night,” Strough says as I gesture him close to ‘confer’ over an area of ground we’re surveying.

  “You shouldn’t speak like that.”

  “Ani—”

  “Stop,” I hiss. “I never said you could call me that.”

  “You never said I couldn’t, either.”

  “I’m saying it now. They’ll charge you for treason, Calvin. Treason.”

  Calvin snorts, kicking away a clump of dirt. “I can’t stand this,” he murmurs. When I don’t answer, he adds, “I could always go AWOL, you know. Take you with me. Steal a jeep and some provisions, just get the hell out of here—”

  “Stop,” I say again, more emphatically.

  “Hear me out—”

  “No. Not what you were about to suggest. Not in this lifetime or the next.”

  We spend the next several minutes surveying in silence. There’s much to talk about between us, and now would be the ideal time. As always, though, we seem to be living between the lines of those around us.

  I’ve all but convinced myself I’m the reasonable one when the urge overtakes me. We’ve been silent too long and I simply want to hear his voice again, even if it is a ridiculous question. Still, I can’t help but wonder…

  “How would you do it?”

  “Do what?” he asks.

  “Go AWOL. Steal a jeep. How would you. Hell, scratch the ‘how’ part. Would you do it at all?”

  Calvin rolls his eyes. “You think I’m all talk.”

  “I think it would be a very tall—”

  A rumble on the horizon stops me mid-sentence. The weather is turning. The threat of rain refocuses us. We still have more of the site to survey, and even less time to finish it now. Following our survey’s prescribed route, we put our backs to the storm and get to work.

  On some level, I’m grateful. There’s more to be said, but I’d rather not spend what little time I have with Calvin quibbling over things that will never come to pass anyway. It was foolish of me to goad him on. If for some reason he does make an attempt to go AWOL and is punished for it, I would never forgive myself.

  I can see while we work that Calvin remains preoccupied, too. I would offer him a penny for those thoughts, but I don’t even have a penny to my name at this point. Somehow the realization is less depressing than it would have been when I first arrived. Whether that’s cause for celebration, I can’t say. What I do know is that losing my family and loving Calvin from afar has given me a perspective I was sorely lacking before.

  We’re finishing up our portion of the survey when the shrill blast of a whistle causes us to jump. The whistle is unexpected, used only in times of emergency. Looking behind us, we see the reason for its use today.

  The storm that only minutes earlier was miles off the horizon has rolled in faster than anyone expected. Besides that first warning, it gave us no other indication of its rapid approach. Or maybe it did and we simply ignored it, too absorbed within our own thoughts to notice the approaching danger. Either way, it’s a moot point now. The whistle sounds a second time and everyone abandons what they’re doing. Picks and shovels are left where they are dropped, lines and guy-wires go slack as the work crew and soldiers alike scramble to find cover.

  When we first arrived at camp, we were encouraged to collect rainwater. Then the first storm came and we filled whatever we could. Many who drank the water from that storm got sick. Several died. To this day those who survived are too weak to help with the camp’s physical labor, so they contribute in other, less demanding ways. Now we know to avoid the rain at all costs.

  Calvin and I are on the far edge of the work detail, among the furthest out. By the time we reach the nearest tents they’re filled to capacity; any more and the structures are as likely to collapse, exposing everyone to the potentially contaminated rain.

  “Hurry!” Calvin commands. We sprint further down the line, toward the first tents to go up early that morning. The storm is nearly on top of us as we reach the last tent. I can hear the rush of the water as it plummets from hundreds of feet above, the pfft-pfft-pfft of heavy drops colliding with the dusty earth beneath our feet. Another few seconds and we’ll be inundated, I think.

  Calvin reaches the tent first and instead of diving into it, he stops, gal
lantly holding the flap open for me. I duck my head and barrel through the opening, narrowly avoiding getting any of the rain on me. Calvin appears through the opening seconds later. His hair and the shoulders of his jacket are wet, yet he risks further exposure by securing the flap.

  “Calvin, your jacket,” I say, though I’m far more concerned by the water beading within his close-cropped hair. Rushing over, I help him strip off the jacket. Then I pull my handkerchief from my pants’ pocket. It’s dirty and sweaty from our efforts today, but I imagine he’d prefer that to letting contaminated rainwater sink into his scalp. Even as I towel him off, though, I can’t help reprimanding him. “I can’t believe you stood and held the damn flap. What did you think, we were on a date or something?”

  This draws a laugh from him, and then I’m laughing, too. And that’s when we realize it. Our laughter, the sound of our voices… other than the pounding of the rain outside, we’re providing the only soundtrack within the tent. A quick look around confirms that we are in fact the tent’s only occupants. Because the others ran to and filled the nearest shelters available, we’ve been given a rare and precious gift in this place—the promise of absolute, uninterrupted privacy. Even if it’s only for ten minutes, the rain and the dangers it presents will keep everyone in camp under cover until well after the storm has passed.

  Surveying the empty tent, we know as we look into each other’s eyes that we may never get this opportunity again. The moment draws us closer. Then it happens and we grasp each other tightly, our mouths meeting at last. The kiss is so aggressive at first it’s almost overwhelming. There’s so much pent up between us, so much we haven’t even said, and suddenly we’re in each other’s arms, our hearts hammering away almost as loudly as the rain.

  With that first kiss finally unsealed, we’ve both realized a dream we never thought possible. Anything more is unexplored territory. Where it might take us, we have no idea. All we know for the moment is that we are safe.